Q #5-What Is Matter?

What Is Matter?

Obviously is everything matter.
The chair, the table the coffee we are drinking. Also the air we are breathing is matter.
Really everything?

How is the exact definition of matter?

a) Matter is something which has a massive shape

b) Matter is everything we can see

c) Matter is everything which has mass and needs space or has a volume

d) Everything which has energy also has matter

e) Just everything is matter!

Answer

The answer is: c) Matter is everything which has mass and needs space.

Does not everything have mass and need space? This certainly applies for solids like stones or metals, for fluids like water or benzine as well. All gases however thin they are have mass and need space.

Does this also apply for light?

All matter is built by elementary particles like the quarks, of which consists the protons and neutrons and therefore the nucleus. They are also built of leptons like the electrons of which the atomic shell consists. Light or photons belong to the family of carrier particles which represent energetic states of the empty space and mediate the force between quarks and leptons (field of force).

Light travels with the speed of light which never can be reached by particles having a mass. In experiments it is possible to convert light into matter. Out of a energy-rich photon results an electron-positron pair. If light is matter or energy will finally be answered quite different depending on the case resp. the executed experiment.

To shed „more light!“ on it, as the German poet Goethe is often interpreted on his deathbed, the classical ideas have to be replaced by concepts of the relativistic and quantum theory.